Nobel Prize novelist José Saramago (post 2): His “identity problem provoked by my surname,” pseudohallucinations, and “compulsive” lying.

Identity Problem

In the previous post, I quoted Saramago’s puzzling explanation for how he got, and why he kept, a surname based on a clerical error. Do his multiple surnames mean that he had an identity problem like multiple personality? He, himself, says that his dual surnames were associated with an identity problem, when he refers to “the delicate identity problem provoked by my surname” (1, p. 41).

His acceptance of two surnames—de Sousa and Saramago—suggests, in literary terms, doubles, and in psychological terms, multiple personality.

Incidentally, José de Sousa Saramago is not the only novelist discussed in this blog who has had two surnames, and who chose to be known by the less authentic of the two. See the past post on Danielle Steel (Danielle Fernandes Dominique Schuelein-Steel).

Pseudohallucinations

Many novelists, in their writing process, can see and hear their characters. These are not true hallucinations, because the novelist knows that other people can’t see and hear the characters; in psychological terms, they are pseudohallucinations.

But since novelists often say they experience their characters as “more real than real,” their seeing and hearing them are very vivid, like virtual reality. And the relevance of such experiences to this blog is that people with multiple personality may sometimes hallucinate their alternate personalities, either in mirrors or in ordinary space. These, too, are pseudohallucinations, since the person with multiple personality knows that other people can’t see the alternate personalities.

In Saramago’s memoir of his childhood, there is one brief mention of his ability to have visual (pseudo)hallucinations, when he refers to “the nightmares that afflicted me while asleep and awake” (1, p. 47). Nightmares when you are awake are pseudohallucinations.

“Compulsive” Lying

Saramago’s “classes on Moral and Civic Instruction…did not prevent me…from becoming the biggest liar I’ve had the misfortune to meet. I would lie for no reason, I lied right, left and center, I lied about anything and nothing. Compulsive behavior they would call it today…[For example] my tendency to invent the plots of films I had never seen…[from] the posters that could be found outside all cinemas…From those eight or ten images I would concoct a complete story, with beginning, middle and end…my companions would listen attentively…and I would heap lie upon lie, almost believing that I really had seen what I was merely inventing” (1, pp. 100-102).

Why does Saramago experience all his lying as “compulsive” and not just imaginative fun? Because he would often lie for no reason that he was aware of, as if someone else were pulling his strings. What could explain this in a person with multiple surnames and identity problems? Perhaps this memoir is a “double” story, and Saramago had an alternate personality who enjoyed creating fiction and/or embarrassing his regular self.

Search “lying” in this blog to see the many past posts that discuss lying and liars in relation to other novelists and multiple personality.

1. José Saramago. Small Memories. A Memoir [2006]. Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa. New York, Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012.